What you need: Three to 12 players, a standard deck of playing cards and a number of spoons totaling one fewer than the number of players. The spoons are placed in the center of the table with handles pointing outward so that they may be easily grabbed by any of the players.

How to play: One person is designated first dealer and deals four cards to each player. Remaining cards are placed in a pile in front of the dealer to form the draw pile. The person to the right of the dealer is known as the trash. Deal passes to the left each round, so that one round's dealer becomes the next round's trash. The dealer starts the round by drawing a card from the draw pile and adding it in his or her hand so that he or she now has five cards. The dealer chooses one of these cards and discards it, passing it face down to the player to his or her left. That player will pick up the single card discarded by the dealer and discard one card to the player to his or her left, while the dealer draws a new card from the draw pile and discards another card to his left.

Play continues with cards being picked up, discarded and passed clockwise around the table until a card is passed to the trash player. The trash picks up the card passed by the player to his or her left, but discards a card to a discard pile instead of to the dealer. If the draw pile is depleted, the trash shuffles the discard pile and passes it to the dealer who uses it as the new draw pile. Alternatively, the dealer may take cards directly from the discard pile.

The rules: Each player is trying to make his or her four cards into a set of four of a kind (four queens, four twos, etc.) by drawing new cards and discarding unused ones. A player should keep the four cards that are most likely to produce a matching set. No player may have more than five cards or fewer than four cards at any given moment. As soon as any player has a set of four of a kind and has discarded to the player on her right, she is allowed to take a spoon from the pile in the middle of the table. As soon as any player grabs a spoon from the pile of spoons, any other player is allowed to take a spoon as well.

This usually causes a mad grab for spoons leaving one player empty handed. The player who ends the round without a spoon loses that round. A player losing a round for the first time earns the letter "S," then at the next loss the letter "P," and so on, eventually spelling out "S-P-O-O-N-S." When a player has accumulated all six letters in "spoons," she drops out of the game. At that time, the number of spoons used in game play is reduced by one. The game continues until only one person remains.

How to win: Be the last person remaining in the game.
What else you need to know: For faster games, players may be eliminated after one loss and the last remaining person declared the winner.Related: More Kids' Games

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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)

We were playing this this weekend and had a disagreement over exactly how it's played. One group insisted that you run through the cards as quickly as possible, which results in the slower players having a build-up of cards, waiting to be viewed. One player (who shall remain nameless) insisted that the card viewing should be orderly, with each person viewing the card at the same time and passing in an orderly fashion.

I played this all the time when i was a kid. Kind of like checkers you can put your own spin on it, but the way we played was the first person to pick the card from the drawing deck looked and passed (we didnt say 1-2-3 look and look at the cards at the same time) and it continued until someone yelled out SPOONS!! But normally we went at a fast pace. Also yelling it out would sometimes result in the person who actually got four of a kind to sometimes not get a spoon!! Which was an added laugh for everyone!

Sandy, We also played this all the time as teenagers (35+ yrs ago- yeesh). What a great game! That is until we'd get too rowdy and start knocking over chairs, slamming the table, waking up the rest of the family (sometimes there was Boonesfarm involved, LOL), then we'd end up getting kicked out of which ever house we were at...... As others have stated, we passed the cards at a constant pace around the table....THAT'S what makes it so much FUN!

I used to play spoons when I was a teenager. Some of the most fun I had on a warm summer evening by the lake with my sister and our boyfriends de jour.Let's see. That would be about 45 years ago. And parentdish is just now discovering it?

I loved playing spoons when I was younger! Thanks for reminding us all of such a fun game. Our family loves to play games at holidays especially. Here's a great family site that has such fun family games at Celebration Ideas Online at www.celebrationideasonline.com there are free printable bingo games. a really fun secret celebrity game and lots more and you can personalize them for whatever you are celebrating. I go there all the time looking for fun stuff for our own family.

TheTalkies

AOL Answers is no longer available.

As AOL continues to grow and evolve we are taking necessary actions to ensure our efforts and resources are
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question (passwords, account information, etc.), please visit our AOL Help site at help.aol.com.